With the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, which was released by Microsoft in Summer 2016, Microsoft included a Windows Subsystem for Linux in Windows 10. This allows you to enable Bash on Windows 10. In this blog post I quickly want to show how you can enable the Windows Subsystem for Linux on Windows 10. This is great if you want to use some Linux tools on your Windows 10 machine. I use it for example to use SSH to connect to Linux Virtual Machines on Azure.

First you have the following requirements:

Windows 10 Anniversary Update – Windows 10 Build 14393 and higher

64-bit versions of Windows 10

Internet Connection to download the Windows Subsystem for Linux in Windows

Active Developer Mode in Windows 10

First enable Developer Mode There are two option you can do this

Open the Settings App, go to Update & Security, go to For developers and enable Developer mode:

You can also use the following PowerShell command to enable Developer Mode:

After some great events like ITDEV Connections in Las Vegas, E2EVC in Rome and ExpertsLive in Amsterdam, I will also speak at the Microsoft Technical Summit 2016 in Darmstadt, Germany. The Microsoft Technical Summit will be the Microsoft IT event in 2016. This time it will be in Darmstadt from December 6-8. In my session I will speak about the new Nano Server deployment option in Windows Server 2016.

Nano Server - The Future of Windows Server

Nano Server is the future of Windows Server. With Nano Server Microsoft created the foundation for Windows Server for the next years. In this session you will get an overview about Nano Server and see some great live demos how you can deploy, manage and operate Nano Server as well as creating applications for it. Get a better understanding of Nano Server and see how you deploy, manage and operate it.

This will be more the last conference I will be speaking in 2016. I am really looking forward and hopefully see you there.

Two weeks Microsoft released Windows Server 2016 and with that the first version of Nano Server. Now in this blog post I want to quickly show you how you can deploy Nano Server in Virtual Machines or on Physical Servers. Nano Server is following the zero-footprint model, so know roles and features as well as no drivers are included by default. With this you always have to create a new Nano Server Image and include the physical drivers or the virtual machine drivers and of course the roles and features.

To create new Nano Server Images you have basically two options, you can choose between the Nano Server Image Generator PowerShell module or the Nano Server Image Builder UI tool. With both you can create VHD, VHDX and WIM files which can be used to deploy Nano Server.

If you have download the latest version of Windows Server 2016 you can create a USB stick to install it on a physical server.

For UEFI Systems:

The at least a 8GB USB drive has to be formatted in FAT32

The USB needs to be GPT and not MBR

Copy all files from the ISO to the USB drive

This is it, and here is how you do it:

First plugin your USB drive to your computer. The USB drive should be bigger than 6GB.

Open a CMD prompt or PowerShell using the Run as Administrator option and open diskpart. Now you can do list all this by using

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list disk

Select the USB disk, in my case this was disk 1

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select disk1

Clean the disk. Be careful this will remove all files and partitions on the USB media.

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clean

Now convert it to GPT

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convert gpt

Create a new primary partition. But make sure the partition is not greater than 16GB otherwise it can be formatted with FAT32.

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2

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create partition primary

# If your USB drive is bigger than 16GB use the following command

create partition primary size=16000

Format the partition with FAT32

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format fs=FAT32 quick

Assign a drive letter to the volume

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assign letter=k

now you can exit the diskpart and copy all files from the Windows or Windows Server to the USB drive and boot it. This works with Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2016 or even Hyper-V Server in the same editions.

For MBR systems:

The at least a 8GB USB drive has to be formatted in FAT32

The USB needs to be MBR

Partition need so be set active

Copy all files from the ISO to the USB drive

This is it, and here is how you do it:

First plugin your USB drive to your computer. The USB drive should be bigger than 6GB.

Open a CMD prompt or PowerShell using the Run as Administrator option and open diskpart. Now you can do list all this by using

1

list disk

Select the USB disk, in my case this was disk 1

1

select disk1

Clean the disk. Be careful this will remove all files and partitions on the USB media.

1

clean

Create a new primary partition. But make sure the partition is not greater than 16GB otherwise it can be formatted with FAT32.

1

2

3

4

5

create partition primary

# If your USB drive is bigger than 16GB use the following command

create partition primary size=16000

Format the partition with FAT32

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format fs=FAT32 quick

Set Active

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active

Assign a drive letter to the volume

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assign letter=k

now you can exit the diskpart and copy all files from the Windows or Windows Server to the USB drive and boot it. This works with Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2016 or even Hyper-V Server in the same editions.

Important:

If Install.wim is larger than 4GB, you cannot copy the file to the drive, because of theFAT32 based partition limitation. The solutions for this is to split the wim file into smaller files.

Many people are right now asking me about what they have to look out for, if they are going to buy hardware for there next Windows Server 2016 deployment using Hyper-V, Storage nodes or just physical servers. Of course you should normally not just buy hardware and design the solution after that, you should create an architecture for your datacenter first and than buy hardware for your needs. But still there are several things to look out for, this is probably not easy to say right now but here are several thing I would recommend to you.

My recommendations

Windows Server Logo: Make really sure that hardware is certified for Windows Server and Windows Server 2016 when the certification is available

If you are going to deploy new Storage in your Datacenter, make sure you have a look at Storage Spaces and SMB Direct (Hyper-V over SMB) and especially the new Storage Spaces Direct feature, which I will write a bit about later this month. This also allows you to do Hyper-Converged scenarios running Storage and Hyper-V on the same physical hardware.

This are just some recommendations if I would buy new hardware I would also look at these features. Of course you don’t need all these features in every scenario, but if you want to make the most out of it, you should definitely look at them. Here are some feature related requirements:

Discrete device assignment

The processor must have either Intel’s Extended Page Table (EPT) or AMD’s Nested Page Table (NPT).

The firmware tables must expose the I/O MMU to the Windows hypervisor. Note that this feature might be turned off in the UEFI or BIOS. For instructions, see the hardware documentation or contact your hardware manufacturer.

Shielded Virtual Machines

UEFI 2.3.1c — supports secure, measured boot

The following two are optional for virtualization-based security in general, but required for the host if you want the protection these features provide:

About

My Name is Thomas Maurer. Microsoft MVP. Work as a Cloud Architect for itnetX, a consulting and engineering company located in Switzerland. I am focused on Microsoft Technologies, especially Microsoft Cloud & Datacenter solutions based Microsoft System Center, Microsoft Virtualization and Microsoft Azure.